How to? Synch email & certain doc folders between 2 computers

This would be a big time saver for me if someone can share their solution. Until recently I carried my laptop back & forth to work, but it died.

Goal:
Synchronize Thunderbird as well as certain document folders between my home PC computer and my work PC computer(both use XP Pro SP3)so that in either location I am working on the identical files and emails.

Details:
I have email at AOL, and use Thunderbird vers 2(haven't migrated to ver 3 yet); I leave emails on the AOL server.
So for active email, I can already do what I want. However, in my Thunderbird Local Folders I save/archive various email correspondence and often need to refer to this when writing email about a current situation; so I want to "see" these emails at both home and at work.

Similarly, I have certain correspondence support material (primarily word.docs and .xls spreadsheets) that I need access to or to send as attachments. I want to "see" these files at both home and work.

I have started to read about various inexpensive synch software (e.g. Good Sync http://www.goodsync.com/) as well as free 2GB storage websites such as Dropbox (https://www.dropbox.com/features). Fortunately(?) I do not yet have an iPhone so I don't have to think about keeping that in synch.

I imagine that many of you have figured out how to keep things synched in a simple manner between work and home, so I don't have to re-invent the wheel. Thanks for your ideas.

Email: I use Gmail & Thunderbird. I don't know how much storage AOL gives you, but Gmail gives so much storage that I can permanently leave everything on the Gmail server. I still download to Thunderbird at home (leaving a copy on the server). Other approaches include (a) using IMAP so that Thunderbird folders and Gmail labels are synched up (I tried this and found it slowed down Thunderbird significantly, so I stopped using it); and (b) not using desktop email at all, just using webmail like Gmail or AOL (I still use the desktop client, but it's a matter of taste).

Files: I keep my entire Documents directory synched with an external hard drive that I carry with me everywhere, so I always have my files wherever I am. I use Unison to do the synching, which is a free graphical front-end to rsync. Unison is not user-friendly, and is no longer under active development, but, much like a good time management protocol, once you take the time to set it up, it takes no effort at all to maintain. If there's another sync software that you think looks good, go ahead and use it. But I definitely recommend the "sync everything" approach. Storage is so cheap, why not?

Lee thanks for suggestion. I have been using DropBox which offers free 2GB of space on their servers and since I do not have tons of files I want access to, this beats carrying around as you do an external HD (or even a small memory stick). It works flawlessly and you can get upto 5GB of storage by friends signing up for the service. Highly recommended by me.

The other great value of Dropbox.com is that I can allow various people to view and/or edit the same document file and I find it to be even better than Google docs - I have not used latter very much however.

As far as keeping emails accessible and synched in different locations, I still have not arrived at what really works well for me.

IMAP is definitely the way to go for this type of thing. Sync'ing your email or "leave copy on server" can get messed up very easily.

Doesn't matter what email you have today, you can forward it somewhere else. The "somewhere else" should be a provider that supports IMAP along with POP.

This will allow you to connect whatever email client you have to your email repository which will stay on the provider's server. The key is to have enough space to keep all your email on the provider's server. I use Gmail because of the ever growing space allocation they have. So for the past 7 years they have allowed my disk quota to grow with my usage.